Data rates within and amongst integrated circuits, multi-chip systems, and systems-on-a-chip (SoC), are being pushed to limits of conventional electrical communication channels and interconnections. This may lead to signal attenuation and distortion in electrical channels due to skin effect, dielectric absorption, and/or impedance mismatches.
Wireless radio-frequency (RF) interconnects are being explored, also referred to as wireless chip area networks (WCANs), to provide wireless interconnects within a chip (intra-chip) or amongst multiple chips (inter-chip).
A WCAN may be implemented with pulse-position or time-hopping spread spectrum modulation (TH-SS), where a data value is modulated as a pulse having one of multiple positions within a corresponding times slot based on the data value.
TH-SS data transfer rates may be increased with phase-shifting. Due to area and power consumption concerns, however, a WCAN transceiver may have limited phase shift agility.
In the drawings, the leftmost digit(s) of a reference number identifies the drawing in which the reference number first appears.